Weapons report gives CIA bloody nose

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The final report of a presidential commission studying US
intelligence failures on illicit weapons is said to include harsh
criticism of the CIA and other agencies for not properly assessing
the possibility that Iraq no longer had arms stockpiles.

Officials who have seen the report's executive summary say it
also criticises agencies' failure to correctly evaluate Saddam's
political manoeuvres.

The report proposes changes in the sharing of information among
intelligence agencies that go well beyond legislation passed by
Congress late last year creating a central director of national
intelligence.

The recommendations are likely to figure prominently in the
confirmation hearings next month of John Negroponte, President
George Bush's nominee as national intelligence director.

The report singles out the CIA under its former director George
Tenet but also includes what one senior official called "a hearty
condemnation" of the Defence Intelligence Agency and the National
Security Agency, two of the largest intelligence organisations.

The unclassified version of the report, more than 400 pages
long, devotes relatively little space to the holes in US
intelligence about North Korea and Iran, which pose the largest
nuclear challenge to the US. Most of that discussion appears only
in a much longer classified version.

"We don't give [North Korean leader] Kim Jong-il or the mullahs
a window into what we know, and what we don't," said an
Administration official.

Officials who have seen the unclassified report say it makes a
"case study" of the national intelligence estimate on Iraq, the
biggest assessment of the country intelligence that officials
produced at the White House's behest - in a hurried few weeks - in
2002.

One defence official who had been briefed on an early draft of
the report said one of its conclusions was that "human intelligence
left a lot to be desired" in the global fight against
terrorism.

The official also said there was already considerable anxiety
about the final report and its recommendations.

"We're all wondering what it will say," the official said. "We
all know there were shortcomings before 9/11. Will this report take
into account what we've done since then?"

The classified version of the report is particularly critical of
US failures to penetrate Iran's nuclear program and notes how much
of the assessment of North Korea's suspected nuclear arsenal is
based on what one official called "educated extrapolation".

Officials and outside experts who were interviewed by the
commission said they were asked at length about the absence of
reliable human intelligence sources inside both countries.

The commission's conclusions, if made public, may only fuel the
arguments now heard in China, South Korea and Europe that an
intelligence system that so misjudged Iraq cannot be fully trusted
when it comes to the assessments of how much progress has been made
by North Korea and Iran in the weapons field.